same rp snippet...different prompt use :)

“Valentine’s Day sucks.”

John looked up at the other man who entered the library, touseled, bleary-eyed, with the look of a man who had either just stumbled out of bed or who had not yet gone. The house was quiet, too early for most of the chaos to begin although the openings and closings of doors he had heard announced that those in charge of the horses and livestock were already up about their day. He glanced at the window, the sky outside still dark, and shrugged.

“Day hasn’t even begun yet, mate…but I’m inclined to agree with you. Who the bloody hell thought it was a good idea to celebrate a bloke’s martyrdom with flowers and chocolates.”

Rafe rubbed his eyes and plopped down in the chair next to the sofa, where John sat with a spread of books on the low table before him. “Sure as hell wasn’t me.”

Rafe had no reason to celebrate love. Love, in his experience, was like a gutter, full of waste products and cast offs, himself among them, all looking up at the stars, hoping for something better…

And while occasionally someone came along to snatch a bit of something from the gutter river, courageously intent on making it into something beautiful, something worth holding on to…most of those just floated away to end up in a sea of solitude.

It was courage Rafe no longer felt. It took too much effort.

Much easier to go with the flow. Best he could hope for was to bump into another floater and wring a fleeting moment of pleasure and happiness from it. Love, like creativity, took courage.

“What are you researching?”

“Angels.”